AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Cover of beautiful oops11/23/2023 To his surprise, the student declined the offer of a do-ever. As he started to sign, his pen suddenly slipped, leaving an inky splotch on the page. At my daughter’s eighth grade moving-up ceremony last week, the principal opened his remarks with the story of a middle schooler who had come into his office that morning to get a signature on an academic award certificate that had been presented to her unsigned, a mistake. Maribel Blanco, senior advisor and director special projects, Office of the Executive Vice Presidentīeautiful Oops!, by Barney Saltzberg. It’s one of those books that suck you in and that you hate to part with when the story ends. It is a story about love, pain, coming of age, and the power and complexity of friendships and family dynamics. It is also a story of how the impact of trauma can be passed down generations. Conroy has an exceptional ability to paint vivid pictures-from the noisy streets of Rome to the steamy bayou. He brings you back in time to the tumultuous Vietnam War era and the horrors of the Holocaust. This is not a new novel, but it is probably my favorite book-I believe I first read it in the late 90s (it was published in 1995) and have reread it a couple of times over the years. Jack McCall, the main character, is an American who is living in Rome with his young daughter seeking refuge there after his wife dies by suicide. Jack’s sister-in-law comes to Rome and begs him to return to their hometown in South Carolina to help track down an old friend who has gone into hiding. I won’t get into why (it’s not a simple story), but I will tell you that the story brings you to unexpected places and time periods. Dave Nuscher, executive director, Content and Planning, University Communications and Marketingīeach Music, by Pat Conroy. ” Hers is a perspective that I won’t soon forget. In that deft interweaving of the personal and the political, Jones fashions an important addition to the canon of novels that seek to define that elusive word “American. And through those letters, Jones brings depth and haunting candor to both Roy and Celestial (as well as a third character, Andre) as fully realized individuals, while she makes clear the reality of being Black in our nation. Once Roy is incarcerated for a crime of which he is falsely accused, the novel moves to the letters sent between the couple. And then rip it all away from both of them as a result of-in the most brutal irony I have read in a long time-a kind gesture he makes to a stranger. And then meet Celestial, a Spelman alumna and an artist on the rise, whom Roy has married and with whom he’s preparing to start their family and build a life. Imagine being the person who has done everything right, and that’s Roy, who grew up working class in Louisiana and earned a scholarship to Morehouse College. I’ve heard the book described as a love story gutted by racial injustice, but I think it’s also a portrayal the distinctive damage that only racial injustice can wreak on the American dream. ” In none of those hours spent poring over literary criticism did I get anything approaching the insights from Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage. Like many other English majors of my era, I recall well spending a lot of time in college mining assigned texts from authors like Fitzgerald, Updike, and Dreiser, searching for a greater understanding of the idea of what it means to be “ American.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |